Ten years ago, when we left the UK to move to Australia, we got a ride to Heathrow with a driver called Malcolm. It was a bit of a squeeze getting our massive suitcases into his car – but we’d hired him a few times before for trips to the airport, and it was hard to imagine choosing someone else for this big, emotional final drive.

Malcolm and DorkySon had always enjoyed a good chat. DorkySon was still into trucks rather than planes at that point, and his favourites were the big green and red Eddie Stobarts – a pretty common sight on the M25. Malcolm used to give DorkySon a heads up when he saw one coming, just to make sure he didn’t miss it.

Not long after we’d arrived in Tasmania, a parcel arrived in the mail. It was a model Eddie Stobart truck in a display box, that Malcolm had sent over for DorkySon.

It is astonishing, and lovely, how kind people can be.

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Last month, we decided to break up our journey home from the UK with a couple of days in London. We were flying out of Heathrow anyway, and it seemed silly just to plough straight through – especially given that our flight to Singapore left at 9am on a Monday morning, and we needed to give ourselves a bit of wiggle room for getting off the islands. Travel during any season can be tricky due to flight and ferry cancellations; travel in autumn can be extra tricky due to weather; and travel on a Sunday still presents a number of additional challenges.

We eventually organised things so that we could leave Harris on the Friday morning, arrive in London Friday afternoon, and spend the weekend exploring the big city. It would be a chance to catch up with DorkyDad’s nephew and his wife (who we last saw at their wedding in Hawaii!), and an opportunity to get our heads on straight before the long flights home.

Unfortunately, our lunchtime flights out of Stornoway got bumped to late afternoon, meaning that we wouldn’t be landing in Heathrow until much later than expected. We didn’t really fancy navigating public transport after 10pm on a Friday night and trying to find a hotel that we’d never been to before.

Well, we wondered… it was ten years later. A lot had happened in those years. But might Malcolm still be driving?

I dug around in the very deepest, darkest depths of my email accounts for his details, and sent off a couple of lines. Not really expecting to hear anything in return.

But guess what?

He was still driving. And although he didn’t usually work that late on a Friday, there was no way he was missing out on this. He needed to see how the Eddie Stobart fan was doing. He would see us at Terminal 2, whatever time we got there.

The one bonus of our flights from Stornoway to Edinburgh getting bumped – and the Edinburgh-Heathrow ones also getting bumped as a result – was that we got an unexpected upgrade to Business Class.

As DorkySon will tell you, Business Class on European flights doesn’t usually mean a better seat – you’ll still be in a standard row of three, just with the middle seat blocked out. But what it does mean is that they feed you – and for three hungry travellers who didn’t have time to eat dinner due to a tight connection in Edinburgh – this was excellent news.

My British Airways Cobb Salad and cherry trifle tasted better than you’d believe, and it meant that when we greeted Malcolm at Heathrow (“We’ll be easy to spot,” I texted him from the baggage claim. “DorkySon is the only one in the airport wearing shorts!”), it was with genuine delight, rather than the tired, hangry faces I’d been worried we might have.

We have a smooth drive into the city, and a brilliant catch up, with lots of chat about DorkySon’s flying lessons, UK politics, and Tasmanian wildlife. It is hard to imagine a better way to start our time in London or to finish our time in the UK.

When we get home, I am able to finally return the gesture of the model truck, and send Malcolm a Jennifer Cossins book about Australian Animals to read with his grandchildren.

 

We are staying at the Melia White House near Regents Park. It is fine, for two nights, but not somewhere I would hurry back to. They have squeezed in a rollaway bed for DorkySon so the room is pretty tight, even by London standards, and the soundproofing is non-existent, so there are times when it feels like we have actually been adopted by the Spanish family next door.

The best thing the Melia has going for it is the brilliant breakfast buffet, where I do that thing of thinking I’ll just have a coffee and a croissant, and then come back with a plate that’s overflowing with cooked food, fancy pastries, the most adorable tiny jars of jam and twenty-eight kinds of cheese.

Oh well. It’s all fuel for the day of walking that lies ahead.

We start at the Science Museum in South Kensington, which is an absolute blast. Gosh there’s a lot there! Unsurprisingly, we spend the most time in the aviation exhibits, and after a couple of hours we are just about saturated – but you could easily spend a full day there.

Since we’re in the area anyway, we poke our heads quickly into the Museum of Natural History next door – but by that time it’s late morning and there are altogether too many people who have had the same idea, so we bail out again very quickly. The contrast between our quiet morning in Tarbert on the Friday, and the noisy, aromatic, ever-moving crowds of London on the Saturday is striking, to say the least.

DorkyDad’s nephew Peter and his wife Gabby lead us to an outdoor food market in Duke of York Square for lunch, where we are spoiled for choice but eventually settle on flatbreads, bao buns and spicy chicken. It’s also another welcome opportunity to say hello to a lot of doggos – and a reminder that it won’t be long until we are back with our own!

After that we’re off on a little mini pub crawl (when in England, right…?) and then later that day comes DorkyDad’s highlight of the entire holiday – dinner at Passyunk Avenue, a Philadelphia-inspired dive bar with cheesesteaks on the menu and walls plastered with Philly sports memorabilia. He’s so overwhelmed by this homecoming-in-London – beer in hand, his brother on the phone, and buffalo wings on the way – that he has a little happy cry. Excellent work, Peter and Gabby!

On Sunday, we only have the morning free before we decamp to an airport hotel, ready for the early wakeup the next day. We have a chilled-out stroll down Portobello Road, where DorkySon picks up an old Ian Fleming novel at a second handstore, and then a fab family lunch at The Sun in Splendour. This is such a pretty part of London, and I almost wish I had a week more to just womble around with my camera.

But home is calling, and it’s time for our last night in the UK.

We have a very mediocre night at a Heathrow Airport hotel – where they make an enormous fuss on their website and social media about having a terrace bar that’s the best planespotting location on the entire Heathrow complex… but when we go up there for a drink it turns out they don’t allow photography and we get a telling off. Urgh. I absorb DorkySon’s fury about this, and turn it into a carefully worded TripAdvisor review a few days later.

Some compensation for that disappointing experience comes in the form of a wonderful, generous Singapore Airlines pilot who spends a good half hour chatting with DorkySon before our flight the next morning. It is inspiring and encouraging to hear that even a 747 pilot had to start his training in a Cessna 172… although while DorkySon is chuffed to have passed 10 hours of flight time, this guy stopped counting when he reached 10,000.

On the Singapore-Melbourne flight, I sit and seethe as a guy across the aisle from me coughs and sneezes for the entire eight hours, not making any attempt to cover his face. It is vile, and I truly cannot understand why he wouldn’t put a mask on. But having seen enough footage of onboard altercations recently, I’m not prepared to confront him either. Instead, I put on my own mask, use a saline nasal spray every hour, glower at him every time I get the chance, and hope for the best. Some unknown combination of those things worked, and a week later I’m relieved to realise that I still haven’t succumbed.

We arrive into Melbourne on a Tuesday evening, and have made things easy on ourselves by booking a night at the Melbourne Airport Parkroyal. It’s so good! My favourite airport hotel to date. The family room comes with an ingenious layout where there a half wall with embedded TV on either side of it in the middle of the room – so parents and teenagers are still in close proximity, but also afforded a good degree of privacy.

And then at last, Wednesday morning, we are home.

Home to our own beautiful doggo, who almost wags her tail off and can’t work out who to smother in kisses first. Home to our own beds, our own food, and our own washing machine – which stays very busy over the following days. Home to warm weather, blossom in the garden, and about 600 photos of people and planes that DorkySon and I somehow need to disentangle from the memory card.

That homecoming was already more than three weeks ago. Such a strange thing, travel, that you can spend months and months planning a trip and then it’s gone in a flash.

For some reason, this has been the hardest ever time I’ve had re-entering the ‘real’ world after a holiday. It could have just been jetlag. It could have been introvert exhaustion after three weeks of peopling – even when the people are your favourite people, it still drains the brain battery. Or it could be that we travelled at such a pace, there wasn’t really time to stop and reflect as we went.

Whatever the cause, I’ve had to give myself a real boot up the bum to get back to normal. I’m there now. Into the swing of things with work. Comfortable in the daily and weekly routines of grocery shopping, dog walks, and household chores. Back on top of the to-do list.

But one of the items on that list is to set aside time and do some deep thinking. How do we carry some of that holiday vibe over into everyday life? How do we bring home some of that ease? How do we make ‘normal’ feel more fun?

I don’t know what the answer is, yet.

Is it more regular but shorter holidays, taken closer to home? Is it a bit more making-do – not being so fussed about it if there’s a pile of laundry waiting to be folded, or if the dishes haven’t been put away? Is it a four-day working week, so that every weekend brings a day for doing non-work-related-but-still-essential tasks, a day for going out and doing something as a family, and then a true rest day?

Maybe it’s something as simple as eating out a bit more often, so that we’re not always, always having to decide what to shop for and cook. DorkyDad and I had an absolutely incredible dinner at Omotenashi last weekend. The food was ridiculous. The owners Sophie and Lachlan were a delight. The whole experience was just fun and lovely, and we came home with huge smiles on our faces – so maybe we need to try and do more of that.

I don’t know.

But I’m going to think about it. And I hope you will too. Answers on a postcard, please.